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4.35 AVERAGE
4.35 AVERAGE
In my post-college life, it's very infrequent that I pick up a text and think "I wish I was reading this for a class," but that's exactly how I felt here. Morrison here is elevated, precise, and so intricate in her observations I felt one reading was not enough for me to do her work justice, that I was only getting a fraction of what she is conveying. It is a text that requires you to be well-rested, alert, and ready to work - it is not entertainment.
Morrison best states her purpose herself in the final pages of the text: "My project is an effort to avert the critical gaze from the racial object to the racial subject; from the described and imagined to the describers and imaginers; from the serving to the served... All of us, readers and writers, are bereft when criticism remains too polite or too fearful to notice a disrupting darkness before its eyes." This text is wonderful as a supplemental criticism of the texts she analyzes, and I wish I was more familiar with the ones she does (although I was still able to follow along). I would highly recommend this for literature teachers/professors to use to supplement if they teach any of the texts she looks at.
Unless you've done work as an English or cultural studies major, you may struggle with this (I did and I have a Master's in English), but you can do it: reread, go slowly, and reflect on it.
Morrison best states her purpose herself in the final pages of the text: "My project is an effort to avert the critical gaze from the racial object to the racial subject; from the described and imagined to the describers and imaginers; from the serving to the served... All of us, readers and writers, are bereft when criticism remains too polite or too fearful to notice a disrupting darkness before its eyes." This text is wonderful as a supplemental criticism of the texts she analyzes, and I wish I was more familiar with the ones she does (although I was still able to follow along). I would highly recommend this for literature teachers/professors to use to supplement if they teach any of the texts she looks at.
Unless you've done work as an English or cultural studies major, you may struggle with this (I did and I have a Master's in English), but you can do it: reread, go slowly, and reflect on it.
This is a series of lectures that Toni Morrison gave and it is really amazing. But I definitely think I would have got more out of it in a classroom or book club setting and if I had read more of the books she was criticising.
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
reflective
fast-paced
80. Playing in the Dark : Whiteness and the Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison
1992, 100 page hardcover
read Dec 9-12
These essays are work but also enlightening if you can manage to fight your way through them. Morrison is so angry and yet she never tells you, never expresses it in any overt way. But she lays it in raw when one compares the balanced tone and the emotion that almost logically is underneath. She writes objectively, ”Black slavery enriched the country's creative possibilities.” - if you aren't cringing, read that again.
From there she just goes on to talk about it. I found myself so uncomfortable reading this, that it became a hard read. If I could have stayed on her tone, it would just been a somewhat interesting, boring and yet very informative read. Yet, that’s not where she is going. She says it, and you think that’s extreme and then eventually you come around to see how much racism plays such a fundamental unconscious and key a roll in American story telling, and how universal it is. It's like the message sinks in and a knife twists in your gut
Think again about Finn in The Force Awakens. Go see any American movie and look at the roll the black characters play - but these servile roles are child’s play. In serious literature blacks play critical roles in balancing main, non-black characters. They provide a critical sense of freedom and independence to those characters. Morrison brings up Henry James, Faulkner, Gertrude Stein, Flannery O’Connor (a bit more respectfully), Mark Twain’s Jim, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Willian Styron, Saul Bellow, Carson McCullers, Edgar Allen Poe, Willa Cather’s [b:Sapphira and the Slave Girl|48213|Sapphira and the Slave Girl|Willa Cather|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1170351218s/48213.jpg|47178], Melville’s Pip, and she hammers Hemingway. Melville was actually conscious about his racial play, using race in an exploratory and creative manner. Certainly he’s comes across as more modern in his sensibilities in this aspect than all these other authors, and most literature coming out today.
Perhaps I should go back and tone this one down. This reviews seems a bit discouraging. But it is an uncomfortable read, with some uncomfortable revelations that you thought you already knew, but really you only knew a small piece of it.
“As a writer reading, I came to realize the obvious: the subject of the dream is the dreamer. The fabrication of an Africanist persona is reflexive; an extraordinary meditation on the self; a powerful exploration of the fears and desires that reside in the writerly conscious.”
1992, 100 page hardcover
read Dec 9-12
These essays are work but also enlightening if you can manage to fight your way through them. Morrison is so angry and yet she never tells you, never expresses it in any overt way. But she lays it in raw when one compares the balanced tone and the emotion that almost logically is underneath. She writes objectively, ”Black slavery enriched the country's creative possibilities.” - if you aren't cringing, read that again.
From there she just goes on to talk about it. I found myself so uncomfortable reading this, that it became a hard read. If I could have stayed on her tone, it would just been a somewhat interesting, boring and yet very informative read. Yet, that’s not where she is going. She says it, and you think that’s extreme and then eventually you come around to see how much racism plays such a fundamental unconscious and key a roll in American story telling, and how universal it is. It's like the message sinks in and a knife twists in your gut
Think again about Finn in The Force Awakens. Go see any American movie and look at the roll the black characters play - but these servile roles are child’s play. In serious literature blacks play critical roles in balancing main, non-black characters. They provide a critical sense of freedom and independence to those characters. Morrison brings up Henry James, Faulkner, Gertrude Stein, Flannery O’Connor (a bit more respectfully), Mark Twain’s Jim, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Willian Styron, Saul Bellow, Carson McCullers, Edgar Allen Poe, Willa Cather’s [b:Sapphira and the Slave Girl|48213|Sapphira and the Slave Girl|Willa Cather|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1170351218s/48213.jpg|47178], Melville’s Pip, and she hammers Hemingway. Melville was actually conscious about his racial play, using race in an exploratory and creative manner. Certainly he’s comes across as more modern in his sensibilities in this aspect than all these other authors, and most literature coming out today.
Perhaps I should go back and tone this one down. This reviews seems a bit discouraging. But it is an uncomfortable read, with some uncomfortable revelations that you thought you already knew, but really you only knew a small piece of it.
“As a writer reading, I came to realize the obvious: the subject of the dream is the dreamer. The fabrication of an Africanist persona is reflexive; an extraordinary meditation on the self; a powerful exploration of the fears and desires that reside in the writerly conscious.”
A thoughtful and thought-provoking read, though I can't pretend to understand or completely agree with every point Morrison makes.
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Okay honestly took me a long tome to read these 3 little essays because uhhh a lot of their content went over my head the first 3-4x upon reading BUT I loveeee Toni Morrison and this definitely changed how I viewed the basis of American literature. Very important!
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced